The logics of the graphics card market and simplistic design should have sooner or later born unique Radeon HD 4800 modifications that would stand out among the numerous ATI reference solutions. One of solutions like that will be discussed today. It is the new Sapphire Toxic HD 4850 512MB GDDR3.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

The Sapphire is almost 10% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 at 1920x1200, which is good considering the small growth of the GPU and memory frequencies. With this 10% addition to speed the Toxic HD 4850 hits the psychologically important barrier of 60fps which is traditionally considered the border of the full-comfort zone for a first-person shooter.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The game doesn’t support FSAA when you enable the dynamic lighting model, but loses much of its visual appeal with the static model. This is the reason why we benchmarked the cards in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. using anisotropic filtering only.

Alas, the pre-overclocked card from Sapphire doesn’t extend the playability zone in this game: 1600x1200/1680x1050 is the highest resolution you can play with more or less comfort at. The resolution of 1920x1200 is only playable on the dual-chip Radeons, including the outdated Radeon HD 3870 X2.